Heteronormativity, Critical Race Theory and Anti-Racist Politics

University of Florida Levin College of Law UF Law Scholarship Repository UF Law Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship Winter 1999 Ignoring the Sexualization of Race: Heteronormativity, Critical Race Theory and Anti-Racist Politics Darren Lenard Hutchinson University of Florida Levin College of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal Writing and Research Commons, and the Sexuality and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Ignoring the Sexualization of Race: Heteronormativity, Critical Race Theory and Anti-Racist Politics, 47 Buff. L. Rev. 1 (1999), available at http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/417 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at UF Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in UF Law Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UF Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BUFFALO LAW REVIEW VOLUME 47 WINTER 1999 NUMBERI Ignoring the Sexualization of Race: Heteronormativity, Critical Race Theory and Anti-Racist Politics DARREN LENARD HUTCHINSONt INTRODUCTION A fiery dissent rages within the body of identity politics and civil rights theory. The participants in this discourse have lodged fundamental (as well as controversial) charges. Most frequently, these critics argue that the enormous cadre of political activists, progressive lawyers and legal theorists engaged in the particulars of challenging social inequality lack even a basic understanding of how the various forms of subordination operate in society because they fail (or refuse) to realize that systems of oppression do not stand in isolation.! Furthermore, these critics have argued tAssistant Professor, Southern Methodist University School of Law. B.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., Yale Law School. This Article benefited from conversations with and comments from Hubert L. Allen, Harlon L. Dalton, Richard Delgado, Sheila R. Foster, Anthony Kronman, George Martinez, Mari Matsuda, Terry Smith and Francisco Valdes. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 1997 Yale Law School Critical Race Theory Conference, the 1997 Critical Race Theory Workshop held at Tulane Law School, and the 1998 Mid-Atlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference held at Rutgers- Camden Law School. I thank the participants of these conferences for their helpful comments and insights. Southern Methodist University School of Law provided the financial support for this research project. This project was completed while I was a Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School. I thank all of the members of the Yale Law School staff who made my stay there enjoyable, especially Beth Barnes and Judy Couture. Finally, I thank Laura Smith and J. Quitman Stephens for their excellent and patient research assistance. 1. See, e.g., Mari J. Matsuda, Beside My Sister, Facing the Enemy: Legal 2 BUFFALO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 47 that anti-oppression scholars and, activists actually rep- licate social hierarchy in their scholarship and activism because they render invisible and subordinate already mar- ginalized individuals.2 The specific contestations of which I speak began to assume an organized form at various points in the late twentieth century. During the post-civil rights era,3 the "second wave" of feminism, and after the ascen- Theory out of Coalition,43 STAN. L. REv. 1183, 1189 (1991) ("As we look at... patterns of oppression, we may come to learn, finally and most importantly, that all forms of subordination are interlocking and mutually reinforcing."); Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins:Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, 43 STAN. L. REV. 1241, 1242 (1991) (arguing that "[fleminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains"); Nancy Levit, Feminism for Men: Legal Ideology and the Construction of Maleness, 43 UCLA L. REV. 1037, 1090 (1996) ("It is crucial to recognize that various forms of oppression... are intertwined. Oppressions of gender intersect with other oppressions, including those of race, sexuality, class and ethnicity."); Paulette M. Caldwell, A Hair Piece: Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Gender, 1991 DUKE L.J. 365, 375 (discussing "interlocking system of oppression based on race and gender that operates to the detriment of all women and all blacks"); Francisco Valdes, Queers, Sissies, Dykes, and Tomboys: Deconstructing the Conflation of "Sex," "Gender," and "Sexual Orientation"in Euro-American Law and Society, 83 CAL. L. REV. 1, 374 (1995) (observing that "oppressions of various sorts always interlock because popular prejudice travels in multiples"). 2. Katharine T. Bartlett, Feminist Legal Methods, 103 HARV. L. REV. 829, 874 (1990) ("A theory that purports to isolate gender as a basis for oppression... reinforces other forms of oppression."); Trina Grillo & Stephanie Wildman, Obscuring the Importance of Race: The Implication of Making Com- parisons Between Racism and Sexism (Or Other -Isms), 1991 DUKE L.J. 397, 401 (arguing that feminist theory "perpetuates patterns of racial domination" by, among other things, centralizing "white issues" and "rendering women of color invisible"); Darren Lenard Hutchinson, Out Yet Unseen: A Racial Critique of Gay and Lesbian Legal Theory and PoliticalDiscourse, 29 CONN. L. REV. 561, 637 (1997) ("[Bly marginalizing issues of race and class, gay and lesbian essentialism replicates patterns of social exclusion-racism, sexism, economic oppression, people of color, women, and the poor remain irrelevant."). 3. See BELL HOOKS, AIN'T I A WOMAN? BLACK WOMEN AND FEMINIsM 94-99 (1981) (criticizing homophobic and sexist ideologies of leaders of 1960s civil rights movement); Audre Lorde, Learning From the 60s, in SISTER OUTSIDER: ESSAYS AND SPEECHES (1984) (same); see also Cathy J. Cohen, Contested Mem- bership: Black Gay Identities and the Politics of AIDS, in QUEER THEORY/SOCIOLOGY 369 (Steven Seidman ed., 1996) (arguing that many racial civil rights organizations dissolved over divisions surrounding identity politics). 4. See, e.g., PAULA GIDDINGS, WHEN AND WHERE I ENTER: THE IMPACT OF BLACK WOMEN ON RACE AND SEX IN AMERICA 307-09 (analyzing black critiques of feminism during the second wave of feminism). Although similar critiques were made during the first wave of feminism, see Angela P. Harris, Race and 1999] IGNORING SEXUALIZATION OFRACE 3 dancy of "gay and lesbian" politics in the 1970s,5 activists and scholars within these social movements began to con- test the very language used to define and describe oppression and the multiple identity categories around which social power and disempowerment are distributed. Driven by personal experience6 and the demonstrated failure of "tradi- tional" policies and theories,7 "outsiders" within progressive political movements mounted substantial "internal critiques" of what they perceived as the essentialist and con- stricted nature of these movements. Women of color and supportive white feminists, for example, argued that feminism and anti-racism obscured or ignored issues relevant to women of color who face both racist and patriarchal oppression and that these political discourses, consequently, reflected the political and social positions of white women and men of color.9 Likewise, lesbian theorists and activists Essentialism in Feminist Theory, 42 STAN. L. REV. 581, 586-87 (1990), those of the second wave were more formalized. 5. Steven Seidman, Identity and Politics in a "Postmodern" Gay Culture: Some Historical and Conceptual Notes, in FEAR OF A QUEER PLANET: QUEER POLITICS AND SOCIAL THEORY 118 (Michael Warner ed., 1993) (discussing divisions between gay men and lesbians during the 1970s and 1980s over the ex-clusion of feminism and lesbian issues from gay politics) [hereinafter FEAR OF AQUEER PLANET]. 6. Caldwell, supra note 1, at 365 (developing critique of anti-discrimination law using personal experiences as a black woman); Margaret Montoya, Mascaras, Trenzas, Y Grefias: Un /Masking the Self While Un/BraidingLatina Stories and Legal Discourse, 17 HARV. WOMEN'S L.J. 185 (1994) (developing critique of legal discourse using personal experiences as a Latina). 7. See Regina Austin, Sapphire Bound!, 1989 WIS. L. REV. 539 (criticizing anti-discrimination law for failing to account for the experiences of black women); Crenshaw, supra note 1, at 1241 (criticizing domestic violence policies for ineffectively assisting women of color); Jenny Rivera, Domestic Violence Against Latinas by Latino Males: An Analysis of Race, National Origin, and Gender Differentials, 14 B.C. THIRD WORLD L.J. 231 (1994) (criticizing domestic violence policies for ineffectively assisting Latinas); Leti Volpp, (Mis)Identifying Culture:Asian American Women and the "CulturalDefense," 17 HARV. WOMEN'S L.J. 57 (1994) (criticizing failure of criminal law to protect adequately the interests of Asian American women). 8. In this Article, "essentialism," unless otherwise noted, refers to efforts to define a social group as unitary despite its members' diverse, as opposed to "essential," experiences. See Richard Delgado, Rodrigo's Sixth Chronicle: Intersections, Essences, and the

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